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Platet
Pierre Platet
RWS 200
Instructor Cervantes
March 22th, 2018
Lord Demagogue Voldemort
Leadership really stands when leaders have the trust of their followers. Analyzing the characteristics of polarization, victimization and anti-intellectualism in fiction can make it easier to identify them in the real world. Patricia Robert Miller claims “The easiest way to restrict the ability of people to criticize you is to make it dangerous to do so” In the Harry Potter’s universe, people are so afraid of Voldemort that they don’t even dare mention his name and usually refers to him as “He who must no be named”, that’s how much fear he emitz. Based on the characteristics of demagoguery as described by Patricia Robert Miller, I will analyze several passages of the text situating its audience, context and background to demonstrate how Voldemort’s rise to power fits as the perfect examples of demagoguery.
The Harry Potter series are very successful books that are worldly known, the story is simplistic and amusing but, when looking deeper, we can trace a whole connections between the ways Voldemort operates to gain power and demagoguery, which could also be compared to past and present leaders in human history such as Hitler. The Harry Potter books describe non-magical people like us as muggles, people who live our lives without knowing the existence of wizards and without particular magical ability. The books allow us to envision a magical world that we are unable to see. Wizards are usually tolerant and good toward muggles but one of them; named Lord Voldemort, has other plans and makes use of demagoguery to his advantage with the purpose of dividing the wizarding world in instance to rise to power.
Polarization is a term widely applied in Harry Potter; it is also the most basic factor of demagoguery. With similarity to in-group out-group, polarization divides people who are on your side with the one that don’t agree with your ideas. Throughout the story, Voldemort is motivated by immortality, superiority, racial cleansing, and more than a bit of self-hatred. Many of these things are shown in earlier books in the series, but become crystallized when the last ones come out. Tom Riddle from his real name, has a witch mother and a muggle father, making him a half-blood wizard. But as Lord Voldemort, his ideologies are centered around the superiority of “pure-bloods” wizards, and his desire to rid the world of Muggle-born wizards and half bloods like himself. The author of the books has acknowledged that Voldemort is similar to Adolf Hitler in his ways. As a friend of Harry mentioned describing Voldemort “There is no good and evil, there is only power…and those too weak to seek it."(Voldemort 211) Professor Quirrell shows Voldemort’s intentions to divide wizards and human, with the objectives to dominate the wizarding world and affirm his power to rule. As we know demagogues encourage the hate a particular, already weak group of people to justify the...
